Hybrid working has fundamentally changed how workplaces are used.
For many organisations, the challenge is no longer whether employees attend the workplace, but how to manage demand across the week while maintaining employee experience, operational effectiveness and real estate efficiency.
Many organisations experience overcrowding on certain days while carrying significant unused capacity on others. This often creates the perception that additional space is required when the underlying issue is attendance concentration rather than overall capacity.
This guide outlines how organisations can use workplace data, behavioural evidence and scenario modelling to create more balanced and effective hybrid workplaces using the Measure, Model, Transform (MMT) framework.
Key questions
Before making significant changes to your hybrid workplace strategy, consider:
- How many people can our workplace support?
- What attendance patterns best support our organisation?
- What person to desk ratio can we confidently support?
- Which hybrid workplace scenarios should we evaluate before changing policy or workplace design?
The remainder of this guide explores how organisations can answer these questions using behavioural evidence and scenario modelling.
The new hybrid challenge
Most organisations have successfully adopted hybrid working. While hybrid working offers greater flexibility for employees, it also introduces new challenges for workplace leaders.
Common challenges remain:
- Tuesday and Wednesday overcrowding
- Empty space on Mondays and Fridays
- Meeting room shortages
- Uneven utilisation across the week
- Employee complaints about workplace availability
- Difficulty forecasting future demand
The challenge is often not attendance itself but how attendance is distributed across people, teams and days.
Common mistakes
Mistake 1
Managing hybrid working using average utilisation alone.
Mistake 2
Assuming attendance patterns cannot be influenced.
Mistake 3
Increasing workplace capacity before understanding workplace behaviour.
Mistake 4
Applying the same attendance expectations to every team.
Mistake 5
Making policy decisions without supporting evidence.
Mistake 6
Failing to evaluate alternative scenarios before making workplace changes.
Why average utilisation can be misleading
One of the most common mistakes is relying on average utilisation alone.
- Average utilisation may suggest excess capacity.
- Peak utilisation may suggest a shortage of space.
Both can be true at the same time.
Example:
- Average utilisation: 38%
- Peak utilisation: 82%
In this scenario, the workplace may appear underutilised overall while still experiencing significant pressure during peak periods.
Understanding both average and peak demand is essential when evaluating hybrid workplace performance.
The hybrid workplace reality
Hybrid working has become the dominant workplace model across many organisations. However, one of the most consistent findings from workplace measurement programmes is that attendance patterns are rarely distributed evenly throughout the week.
Across years of workplace data, we have observed a common pattern. While average workplace utilisation often remains between 30% and 40%, demand becomes heavily concentrated during the Tuesday to Thursday period.
This creates what we describe as a “midweek mountain”, where utilisation may regularly exceed 70-80% during peak days while Mondays and Fridays remain significantly underutilised.
The result is a common workplace paradox. Employees experience overcrowding, difficulty finding desks and pressure on workplace amenities during peak periods, while large portions of the estate remain underutilised for much of the week.
Many organisations conclude that they require additional space when the underlying challenge is often an imbalance in attendance patterns rather than an overall lack of capacity.
Understanding hybrid workplace behaviour requires more than attendance policies and booking data alone. Booking systems capture intention. Sensors capture reality.
By combining booking behaviour with actual occupancy data, organisations can understand how attendance varies across teams, departments, locations and days of the week. These insights provide the foundation for evaluating alternative attendance strategies, workplace configurations and person to desk ratios before making costly workplace decisions.
The objective is not simply to increase utilisation. The objective is to create a more balanced workplace where average utilisation is improved, peak demand remains manageable and employee experience is protected.
Understanding hybrid workplace behaviour
Before making decisions, organisations should understand how employees actually use the workplace.
Key questions include:
- Which days experience the highest demand?
- Which teams attend most frequently?
- How does attendance vary across departments?
- Which workplace assets experience the greatest pressure?
- What patterns emerge over time?
Understanding attendance behaviour provides the foundation for effective hybrid workplace planning.
Data required before making decisions
Organisations should seek to understand:
Attendance patterns
- Average attendance
- Peak attendance
- Attendance by day
- Attendance by department
Workplace demand
- Desk demand
- Meeting room demand
- Collaboration space demand
Workplace behaviour
- Department behaviour
- Team attendance patterns
- Repeat attendance patterns
Space efficiency
- Utilisation by floor
- Utilisation by neighbourhood
- Cost per occupied square foot
Scenario modelling for hybrid workplaces
Rather than assuming a single solution, organisations should evaluate multiple possible approaches.
Questions include:
Attendance distribution
- How can peak demand be reduced?
- Which teams contribute most to workplace pressure?
- What attendance patterns would create more balanced utilisation?
Capacity planning
- What person to desk ratio can be supported?
- What happens if attendance increases?
- What capacity can the workplace support while maintaining acceptable utilisation levels?
Workplace design
- How should neighbourhoods be configured?
- What spaces experience the greatest demand?
- What workplace changes could improve employee experience?
Policy evaluation
- What impact would different attendance expectations have?
- How would alternative hybrid approaches affect utilisation?
Tessellate serves as a specialised forecasting and workplace modeling engine, integrating vast datasets from sensors, access logs, and booking platforms. It empowers leadership to simulate various conditions, predicting how shifts in behavioral patterns or workplace strategy will influence future occupancy dynamics.
As the hybrid model matures, many firms grapple with attendance concentration, meeting room shortages, and the difficulty of anticipating future demand. Tessellate mitigates these risks by providing a platform to test diverse scenarios before committing to significant real estate or policy investments.
Key modeling capabilities include:
- Assessing the impact of shifting from remote first to a 3 day onsite mandate, specifically identifying potential midweek overcrowding and evaluating if current meeting and collaboration assets can absorb the increased demand.
- Calculating the necessary configuration of workstations and flexible zones required to maintain a balanced occupancy range of 50-60%, ensuring peak pressure remains below the 80% threshold to protect the employee experience.
Through predictive evidence and historical analysis, Tessellate delivers quantified outcomes and data driven recommendations. This evidence based approach allows organisations to refine utilisation, enhance operational effectiveness, and validate decisions before implementing workplace transformations.
Evaluating trade offs
Every hybrid workplace strategy involves trade offs.
Evaluation criteria commonly include:
- Employee experience
- Workplace flexibility
- Capacity
- Collaboration effectiveness
- Real estate efficiency
- Operational risk
- Future growth
Understanding these trade offs helps organisations make more informed decisions.
Example transformation journey
Current state
↓
Measure
Understand attendance behaviour and workplace demand.
↓
Model
Evaluate alternative attendance, workplace and policy scenarios.
↓
Transform
Implement workplace changes.
↓
Validate
Measure outcomes and refine over time.
Questions every Executive should be able to answer
- Which days create the greatest workplace pressure?
- Which teams contribute most to peak demand?
- What workplace capacity do we actually require?
- What attendance patterns best support our objectives?
- What person-to-desk ratio can we support?
- What scenarios should we evaluate before changing policy or workplace design?
Content